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In a collaborative effort to provide a richer set of information—including voice, data and video—to the front lines, Verizon and Intrado are teaming to advance the state of 9-1-1 emergency services in the United States. Under a strategic business agreement, the two companies later this year will roll out advanced capabilities that will be available to 9-1-1 centers nationwide to enable them to keep pace with today’s rapidly changing telecommunications systems and the way people expect to communicate.

Verizon and Intrado are already upgrading the Denco Area 9-1-1 District in North Texas to a modern 9-1-1 platform powered by Internet protocol-based technologies. “Just as people are changing the way they communicate, so too must the 9-1-1 system change and evolve beyond just the limited information available under current systems,” said Farooq Muzaffar, Verizon Business vice president of product management. “Working with Intrado, we’re building an advanced emergency communications platform that can provide multimedia information from the connected world we live in.”

Today, 9-1-1 centers face a wide range of issues, ranging from funding, staffing challenges and high call volumes to helping people with special needs and the proliferation of the use of wireless phones.

The new 9-1-1 services will be conducted via an IP-enabled communications platform that will be able to support emerging and future capabilities such as consumers sending photos, videos and text messages to public safety responders during an emergency event. The new offering will also build a foundation to enable car safety systems to transmit key crash information, such as how fast the vehicle was traveling at the time of impact, the number of passengers present or whether a vehicle flipped over.

“Intrado and Verizon share a passion for helping public safety professionals, and are combining our collective expertise and industry leadership to deliver solutions that will help improve the capabilities of 9-1-1 centers,” said Joe Hernandez, senior vice president for Intrado. “Together, this alliance will make a positive difference in the lives of people throughout the United States.”

Denco Pioneering a Path to Advanced 9-1-1

Under a contract with the Denco Area 9-1-1 District, Verizon and Intrado are upgrading the district’s 9-1-1 platform to IP and enabling the district to support and implement the handling of multimedia information for 9-1-1. The contract is valued at $9 million over six years.

The new solution uses Verizon’s managed IP network to route emergency calls, and advanced call-management capabilities powered by Intrado to support the handling of multimedia communications calls. The Denco 9-1-1 District serves as the coordinating agency for 9-1-1 emergency services throughout Denton County and the entire city of Carrollton in North Texas. Denton County is among the 10 largest counties in Texas. “This new system will help our public safety agencies share information more quickly and thereby deliver a coordinated response from police, fire and other first responders,” said Mark Payne, executive director of Denco. “In the future, whether it is video from a bank robbery with a glimpse of a suspect or vital statistics from a car crash, we believe this system will provide a foundation to help keep North Texans safer.”

Verizon’s Muzaffar said: “At the heart of our next-generation solution for Denco is Verizon’s reliable and secure IP backbone, which allows for the introduction of new call-handling features. Denco continues to be a leader in public safety efforts by adopting this modern 9-1-1 technology, which will ultimately be able to transmit photographs and video to provide a richer flow of information from the accident scene to the dispatcher’s screen.”